Amazing

At four twenty nine PM today February 4, 2009, I’m writing near this cute waterfall here at the Lanai at Bread of Life. Imagine having WIFI connection here! Right outside Soul Shop, this whole place is my oasis here in Quezon City. I like the peace, the clean and green atmosphere, and the cozy ambiance. At Soul Shop Cafe,I had cafe Americano and oat cookie, cheap at P70, while I read the latest edition of TIME magazine (all sorts of magazines are on the restaurant’s magazine rack, for people who like to read them). After that and an hour of prayer, I sat in one of the round tables and scribbled these notes.

When I left PBS, after proofreading '100 ways to live the word,' I thought about how to spend the dead hours after proofreading and before the interview which I would conduct at 6:30 that night. Soul Shop at Crossings 77 easily won over the National Museum which also battled in my thoughts. So from UN Avenue I took the FX going to SM Fairview and got down at the last Street before Timog Avenue.

Soul Shop offers me rest and respite from my usual day to day scenarios. While my days are ordinary, being here is extraordinary because here I feel completely secure in my aloneness; extraordinary because the comfort it offers lasts long even after I’ve already left.

I have gone to the Touch of Glory Prayer Mountain in Antipolo, but I found it quite noisy for a prayer place. However, BOL prayer room adjacent to Soul Shop where I also had a glimpse of some ministers of Bread of Life having their quiet time with God, this is one of the best places for personal retreat.

Outside the “prayer room,” while I was taking my shoes off, an old man asked me. “Is this where you’re going?” I didn’t know how long he had been watching me, but I thought from his question that this was his first time here. He asked “What is this place?” And I said, “A place to pray.” And in my hurry to get inside to gather myself in this soothing quietness of prayer, I did not even notice if he too, took his shoes off and prayed.

Anyway, after an hour, I opened my eyes and realized that all the lights were turned on. At least four people were reading something devotional and perhaps they needed the light. This place, that is constantly showered with prayers and thoughts and meditations about God’s Word, has always made me "feel" the rush of Divine Power. Some Christians are wary of this “feeling” thing, but in other words, inside that prayer room, I always had this full awareness that God would definitely meet with me, there, at that exact hour of prayer.

On my way to Soul Shop, I remembered one Lakbay TV episode, where one Fil-Am who didn’t know how to speak Tagalog took the LRT and went down from station to station. The experience supposedly would expose him and viewers too, to the “local color” from Monumento to Baclaran. But at Central situation, he cut his trip already. At every stop, he did his best to say something "interesting" about the place. However, it’s really difficult to highlight any distinctive quality at each stop. He goes down the train, sees a tiange, tries out some delicacies at the nearest turo-turo, and as much as he tried to be cute and entertaining in those settings, his travel notes were forgettable. Maybe, because he has not lived in the Philippines long enough, he’s not yet immune to the lack of luster, the plainness, the poverty on the streets. Did he really find those places interesting?

I remembered this because as the FX negotiated TAFT, Espana, and finally Quezon Avenue, I searched for something interesting on the road, on the buildings, on the billboards, on the street corners, in the traffic of people walking or scrambling for a ride. I was disappointed at what I saw along the way. What did I expect to see?Actually, I just like to be amazed.

Here at Soul Shop, I was amazed – not with the place itself nor its ambiance – but with the presence of God.